


marks

by nuttyshake



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: M/M, post-trk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-25
Updated: 2016-09-25
Packaged: 2018-08-17 07:55:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8136220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nuttyshake/pseuds/nuttyshake
Summary: Ronan likes drawing constellations on Adam's skin, and one of them is fittingly shaped. Cabeswater talk ensues.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I honestly don't know what this is, but it's got way too much kissing.

“That one looks like a tree.”

“Mmmh,” Adam giggled, letting Ronan nose at his cheekbone and shivering when his thumb trailed over it, drawing constellations in the dark that only he could see.  In the dim light coming from the window, Adam was all sharp points and angles and felt unbearably fragile to the touch, like he could break in Ronan’s hands if Ronan didn’t pay enough attention. “What kind of tree?”

Ronan’s gaze shifted to Adam’s semi-closed eyelids, laying a kiss there to keep them shut. The gentle sigh it drew from him dipped Ronan’s head back down to press another on his nose, and another on that spot behind his ear where he knew Adam was ticklish, and another at the corner of his mouth. When Adam whined and followed the lips that were retreating, Ronan laughed. “The trees in Cabeswater.”

“Oh, that narrows it down.”

“It really does,” Ronan hummed, the freckles on Adam’s cheeks and shoulders taking on more and more magical shapes the more he looked at them. He traced suns on his collarbone, and moons all over his jaw, and seawaves where they went up and down, and Adam’s arms tightened around his back where he held him. “No other trees would mark you like this.”

Adam opened his eyes – not as blue as Ronan’s were, but blue like the sky right after dawn, when the sun is rising and waiting for as many people as possible to wake up and admire it before showing its true light. _I am awake,_ Ronan thought, despite it being two, maybe three in the morning. _I’m never sleeping again._

There had once been a time, when Ronan was very little, before he’d even dreamt Matthew, when he couldn’t sleep without the fake stars plastered on his ceiling. He suspected his father had dreamt them up for him – they couldn’t be taken off and burned to the touch, so many and so little and sparkling in the night just like the stars above the Barns. When his father had died, they’d stopped working and Ronan had found them scattered on the floor, flecks of dust and ashes.

But now, he had fireflies to make up for it. Though he’d given what he called the orbmaster to Declan to bring to DC, he still had plenty of little lights that had followed him from the fields into his bedroom, where now they floated, blinking in turn over Adam’s forehead, Adam’s thin mouth, Adam’s long fingers. Sometimes they blinked over Ronan, too, but only when his eyes closed and he didn’t need to look at Adam anymore.

When that happened, like right now, their legs under the sheets stayed entwined. Adam brought his foot up Ronan’s calf, tickling and caressing at the same time, and waited for him to open his eyes, his head burrowed in the crook of Ronan’s neck. A smile was already playing on his lips, the one that never left these days. “I just find it so unfair.”

Ronan wanted to kiss him. There was never a time he _didn’t_ want to kiss him, but with him so close at night, it was easy to remember he didn’t have to feel ashamed about it. So he did. “What?”

Adam’s hand swept down Ronan’s neck, nails lightly raking the unmarred skin there. “Why am I the only one that’s been marked, when you’re clearly Cabeswater’s favorite?”

“Don’t know. I think it feels threatened.”

Adam’s eyelashes fluttered once. He and Ronan were close enough that Ronan felt it on his cheek. “By you?”

“Sure. It loved you, and you traded it for Gansey’s life. That’s got to hurt.” He kissed Adam square on the mouth again before he could reply, taking his time tracing the corner of his lips before pulling away. “So now it’s watching from the sidelines as you move on and…ah…” Adam’s tongue had flicked across his lips again, “forget all about it.”

Adam’s playful smirk didn’t die, softening instead into a concerned, adorably confused grin and a crease of his brow. “I didn’t give it up. It was taken from me. It was going to die anyway.”

“I know.” Ronan lay his chin on top of Adam’s head to breathe him in. In the day he smelled like gasoline, something that drove Ronan mad, but in the night, right after showering, he smelled of his shampoo, of pine and sandalwood and just a touch of cedar that claimed Adam as part of the Barns. Their hands met halfway, tangling fingers. “Do you ever miss it?”

Adam shrugged, which meant he did. Despite summer being well on its way, his skin under the light of the fireflies was pale. “Do you?”

“No,” Ronan said. “It’s still in my head. When I close my eyes, it’s there.”

“But you can’t feel it anymore,” Adam guessed, “not when you’re awake.”

Hearing it like that, it should’ve sounded like a nightmare. Having to comply to the rules of reality, never seeing anything as more colorful or more full of potential than it really was, but he hadn’t hated being awake in a long, long while. “Not always. I can feel it sometimes.”

“You can?” Adam pulled back to stare at him. “When?”

“When you’re here, mostly.”

Adam snorted. “That better not be a new pick-up line, Lynch.”

“No, shut up. I’m serious.”

His laughter soon died down when Ronan jokingly pushed Adam away, the two of them now turned onto their sides again, facing each other. “Can you feel it right now?”

“Can’t you?”

Adam shook his head. “I never feel it anymore.”

It was weird, but not unlikely. Ronan had learnt to look for signs of Cabeswater’s magic all around him, learnt all the places where that magic could be hidden, but Adam had only ever had it inside of him, as much a part of him as a limb or a kidney. Even if Ronan managed to dream Cabeswater again, like he’d been trying all summer to, Adam would never find that connection again. “Would you like to?”

 A spark of excitement caught in Adam’s eyes, immediately clouded by doubt. He didn’t think that was possible. Ronan didn’t, either, but that had never stopped either of them before. Finally, Adam nodded.

“Okay,” Ronan gulped, mind going a hundred miles per hour. “Okay. Um, place - place your hand here.”

Adam lay unresponsive, so Ronan guided their entangled fingers to his mouth to press a kiss on Adam’s palm before laying it over his own chest, fingers splayed where Ronan’s heart should be.

“Okay, now-”

“Do you have any idea what you’re doing?”

Ronan just looked at him. “Do I ever?”

“Fair point. Go on.”

Ronan frowned. He thought of all the ways being with Adam helped him feel Cabeswater, and how, even after the forest had died, the spell that had been cast on him when he’d sworn to be its hands and eyes hadn’t worn off. It was how Ronan could reach out to it, when Adam was unguarded enough not to retreat into his own mind and let someone else take over. It was why he’d been so surprised to hear that Adam’s own connection had been cut off when traces of it still lingered all over him. 

“Close your eyes,” Ronan guided. “Reach outside of yourself.”

Adam looked confused, but did as he’d asked. Ronan was probably reminding him of Persephone, when he spoke like that. But dream fireflies flew all around them, and dream things had lived in that same house for years, and dream cows and horses and deer were sleeping outside, not too far away, and Adam lay in the arms of a half dream; so much magic engulfed him that it was hard to believe Adam wasn’t aware of any of it.

“Anything?” Ronan asked, and Adam sighed. It was answer enough. “You’re focusing on your own mind again. Jesus, Parrish, you won’t find Cabeswater there. It’s gone. It’s all around you, now.” 

“It’s not,” Adam insisted, silently tightening his grip on Ronan like he could draw magic right from his heart. It hurt, but not enough for Ronan to wish he was wearing a shirt, for once.

“Just because it’s got a different shape now, doesn’t mean it’s not there. Stop thinking.”

Adam nuzzled his jaw. “Help me,” Adam begged, his eyes still closed. His free hand wandered up over Ronan’s back, nails digging into the back of his head where small curls had been growing for months.

So Ronan did. He opened his mouth, dragging Adam up against him and waiting for him to take charge. Adam’s already kiss-swollen lips teased his, barely touching and then colliding, bruising, taking. His tongue traced the roof of his mouth – _help me_ _take my mind off of it please please –_ and Ronan, incapable of denying Adam anything, leant his head back against the pillow, exposing his neck. When Adam gently bit the skin there, the fireflies overhead went crazy.

“Now we’re both marked,” Adam muttered, biting down on another spot, and another, another. Ronan could barely hear him over his own gasps. “So everyone else will know to stay away.”

“Everyone else?”

Adam kissed where he’d bitten, once, twice, “When I’m away,” and then pulled back.

Ronan looked at him, eyes wide, lips parted, the slightest of blushes tinging his cheeks. _Beautiful beautiful beautiful._ “But I don’t want anyone else,” he whispered. _It’s you I’m worried about._

The uneasiness in Adam’s smile didn’t go unnoticed, but Ronan couldn’t focus too much on it. With one final kiss, Adam gestured for Ronan to turn around on his side and settle into him, arms firmly wrapped around him over his waist.

It was a long time before either of them spoke, a lone whisper in the night. All the fireflies had flown away.

“Ronan?”

“Mmmh?”

“I feel Cabeswater now.”

“Good.”


End file.
